L’idée d’exceptionnalisme américain a fait l’objet d’une attention particulière depuis le début des années 1990. Souvent décriée, parfois louée mais généralement réifiée, elle est devenue un concept déterministe au service d’une lecture linéaire de l’histoire des États-Unis depuis l’indépendance. La nécessité de déconstruire cette invariance simplificatrice et d’étudier l’exceptionnalisme comme une production sociale évoluant dans le temps en fonction de son contexte national et international est à l’origine de ce travail. L’exception américaine ne peut, en effet, être pensée uniquement à partir du national tant elle répond à des représentations conjuguées de Soi et de l’Autre. À la charnière entre le national et l’international, la politique étrangère est donc un poste d’observation privilégié de la construction de ce trait identitaire américain. L’ambition de cette thèse est de confronter le concept d’exceptionnalisme aux sources afin de mieux comprendre ce qu’il signifie pour nos acteurs et de mesurer son impact sur la politique étrangère des États-Unis durant les années d’après Guerre froide. Face à l’évolution du système international, la puissance nordaméricaine redéfinit, en effet, son rôle et son engagement extérieur. Après un XXe siècle marqué par des affrontements idéologiques globaux, les États-Unis se posaient en champion d’un nouvel ordre international garant de l’universalisation des valeurs démocratiques et libérales. Profondément moral, ce positionnement justifiait alors l’engagement des États-Unis dans une nouvelle lutte entre la modernité et le fanatisme à la fin des années 1990 avant d’être discrédité par l’enlisement militaire en Afghanistan et en Irak. Le changement de paradigme de la seconde moitié des années 2000 minimisait alors l’impact de la représentation exceptionnelle du Soi américain sur la définition de la politique étrangère. / The idea of American exceptionalism has been the subject of many studies since the beginning of the 1990s. Usually criticized, sometimes praised but generally reified, it became a determinist concept creating a linear perspective of U.S. history since the Independence. Also, the necessity to question this simplistic invariance and to study exceptionalism as a social production evolving with its national and its international contexts is at the origin of this project. Also, this American exception cannot be considered only through a national prism since it mixes representations of the Self and the Other. Between domestic and global affairs, foreign policy, then, represents an excellent observation point of the construction of this American identity feature. The purpose of this dissertation is to question the concept of exceptionalism through the analyze of primary sources in order to have a better understanding of its meaning for the actors and to evaluate its impact on U.S. foreign policy during the post-Cold War years. Indeed, the North-American power had to redefine its international role and engagement whereas the international system knew a dramatic evolution. After a 20th century marked by global ideological conflicts, the United States championed a new world order standing for the universalization of liberal and democratic values. This deeply moral position, then, justified the U.S. engagement in a new fight between modernity and fanaticism at the end of the 1990s before its discredit in the wake of the military stalemates in Afghanistan and Iraq. The change of paradigm during the late 2000s also minimized the impact of the exceptional representation of the American Self on the making of U.S. foreign policy.

It is now well-known that The King and I has little claim to truth. Recent research has exposed the inaccuracy of the “biographical” works on which the musical is based: Anna Leonowens invented many things about her personal background and experiences. Much of her life, then, is a contrived fantasy. Yet her life of fantasy has been resurrected in countless adaptations, including the 1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and its 2015 revival production, that ceaselessly draw audiences. The fascination of American audiences with Anna’s tale lies their belief in the timeless American ideals that her fantasy employs: those of freedom and equality, which undergird such myths as American exceptionalism and American multiculturalism. The appeal of this cultural fantasy is illuminated by examining the history of the Cold War era in which The King and I was created, as well as the politics of President Trump that define recent years and influence the creation and reception of the revival show (and its 2016-2018 national tour). America today is occupied by the same conflicting desires for integration/internationalism and isolationism of bygone times; today, the idea of a superior America is still upheld by a fear of the Other. Examining how the visual elements, songs, and performances of the original and revival musicals both reinforce and undermine the fantasy of cultural superiority will reveal how Americans continue to fall under the spell of fantasy, and how a connection to the past sheds light on what it means to be an American today.

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[pt] O conceito de excepcionalismo americano permeou a história dos EUA e criou uma imagem de um país com um sistema e uma sociedade democráticos superior, capaz de promover a democracia, os direitos humanos e o Estado de Direito em nível nacional e internacional. Essa ideia legitimou a liderança dos EUA na construção de uma ordem liberal internacional. A ascensão ao poder do Presidente Donald Trump e a atual crise da ordem global contribuíram para questionar essa ideia e seus pressupostos. Esta dissertação tem dois objetivos principais: em primeiro lugar, discutir o conceito de excepcionalismo americano e, em segundo lugar, analisar como o conceito de excepcionalismo americano afeta a relação entre os Estados Unidos e o Direito Internacional. Será argumentado que o excepcionalismo pode ser definido como um conceito e analisado com as lentes teóricas e metodológicas da História Conceitual. Sem um significado definitivo, o excepcionalismo americano é composto de diferentes interpretações que variam de acordo com o contexto em que o autor se situa. Ainda assim, sua importância na história e na identidade americanas é inquestionável, tornando necessário levar em conta o excepcionalismo ao tentar entender as ações dos Estados Unidos. Para analisar a relação entre o excepcionalismo americano e o Direito Internacional, a dissertação se envolverá com a literatura sobre a Ordem Liberal Internacional, a hegemonia dos EUA e o multilateralismo. Além disso, será perguntado se a ascensão de Donald Trump pode ser considerada uma ruptura em duas tradições americanas: a relação dos Estados Unidos com o Direito Internacional e o uso político do excepcionalismo. Argumenta-se que, apesar de se distanciar claramente da tradição excepcionalista, Trump não se desviou da tradição do Direito Internacional como é comumente percebido. Essa percepção é derivada de seus discursos radicais, de sua personalidade estrondosa e de seus vínculos com a extrema direita, mas não se traduz na maioria de suas políticas. / [en] The concept of American exceptionalism has permeated U.S. history and created an image of a country with better democratic system and society, able to promote domestically and internationally the democracy, human rights and the rule of law. This idea has legitimatized U.S. leadership in the construction of a liberal international order. The rise to power of President Donald Trump and the current crisis of the global order have contributed to question this idea and assumptions. This dissertation has two main aims, firstly, to discuss the concept of American exceptionalism, and secondly to analyse how the concept of American exceptionalism affects the relationship between the United States and International Law. It will be argued that exceptionalism can be defined as a concept and analysed with the theoretical and methodological lenses of Conceptual History. With no definitive meaning, American exceptionalism is made of different interpretations that vary across the context the author was situated in. Still, its importance in American history and identity is unquestionable, making it necessary to take exceptionalism into account when trying to understand the United States actions. In order to analyse the relation of American exceptionalism and International Law, the dissertation will engage with the literature of International Liberal Order, U.S. hegemony and multilateralism. Furthermore, it will inquire if the rise of Donald Trump can be considered a rupture in two American traditions: the United States relationship with International Law and the political use of exceptionalism. It is argued that, although clearly distancing himself from the exceptionalist tradition, Trump did not deviate from International Law tradition as it is commonly perceived. This perception is derived from his radical speeches, loud personna and ties to the Far-Right, but do not translate into most of his policies.

In 1971, Isaac Asimov observed in humanity, a science-important society. For this he credited the man who had been his editor in the 1940s during the period known as the golden age of American science fiction, John W. Campbell, Jr. Campbell was editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, the magazine that launched both Asimov's career and the golden age, from 1938 until his death in 1971. Campbell and his authors set the foundation for the modern sci-fi, cementing genre distinction by the application of plausible technological speculation. Campbell assumed the science-important society that Asimov found thirty years later, attributing sci-fi ascendance during the golden age a particular compatibility with that cultural context. On another level, sci-fi's compatibility with "science-important" tendencies during the first half of the twentieth-century betrayed a deeper agreement with the social structures that fueled those tendencies and reflected an explication of modernity on capitalist terms. Tethered to an imperative of plausibly extrapolated technology within an American context, sci-fi authors retained the social underpinnings of that context. In this thesis, I perform a textual analysis of stories published in Astounding during the 1940s, following the sci-fi as it grew into a mainstream cultural product. In this, I prioritize not the intentions of authors to advance explicit themes or speculations. Rather, I allow the authors' direction of reader sympathy to suggest the way that favored characterizations advanced ideological bias. Sci-fi authors supported a route to success via individualistic, competitive, and private enterprise. They supported an American capitalistic conveyance of modernity. / Master of Arts

While few would deny America is the most powerful nation on earth, there is considerable debate, and controversy, over how America uses its foreign policy power. This is even truer since the “unipolar moment,” when America gained sole superpower status with the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In the Cold War Reinhold Niebuhr was the main theological voice speaking to American power. In the Unipolar world, the Religious right emerged as the main theological voice, but instead of seeking to curb American power the Religious right embraced Neoconservatism in what I will call “Totemic Conservatism” to support use of America's power in the world and to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy, which is the notion that America is a chosen nation, and this legitimizes its use of power and underpins its moral claims. I critique the Niebuhrian and Religious right legacies, and offer a classical realist strategy for theology to speak to America power and foreign policy, which avoids the neoconservative and religious conservative error of totemism, while avoiding the jettisoning of Niebuhr's theology by political liberals, and, the political ghettoizing of theology by his chief critics. This strategy is based on embracing the understanding of classical realism, but not taking the next step, which both Niebuhr and neoconservativism ultimately do, of moving from a prescriptive to a predictive strategy for American foreign policy. In this thesis, I argue that in the wake of the unipolar moment the embrace of the Religious right of Neoconservatism to triumph Manifest destiny in American foreign policy is a problematic commingling of faith and politics, and what is needed instead is a strategy of speaking to power rooted in classical realism but one which refines Niebuhrian realism to avoid the risk of progressing a Constantinian theology.